


Static Electricity

by local_doom_void



Series: Methods of Humanity [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Gen, Horcruxes, Identity, Identity Issues, Mentor Voldemort (Harry Potter), Parent Voldemort (Harry Potter), Parseltongue, Professor Tom Riddle, Professor Voldemort really but the tags..., Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Sassy Nagini, not biologically but in ways that matter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25516501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void
Summary: Tom Riddle was never taught how to understand children. Learning from scratch didn't seem proper, but it seems to be working so far.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort, Harry Potter & Voldemort
Series: Methods of Humanity [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1855237
Comments: 58
Kudos: 762





	Static Electricity

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to my oneshot _[You Asked If I Were Happy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008067)_. Reading that before this is encouraged, if you haven't already, in order to understand the setup of this scenario.

"Oh – Professor Moregrave? Thomas, a moment, if you would?"

The brown haired man who is about to pass through the doorway of the Hogwarts staff room pauses.

His name is not Thomas Moregrave – or is it? The answer to that question is far too complex. Perhaps he might also be Voldemort, but it would be a bit stupid of him to claim that he were Voldemort at this moment. Voldemort is a Dark Lord – Thomas is a Hogwarts professor. Surely, of course, the headmaster of that school, one Albus Dumbledore – staunchly anti-Voldemort – would never deign to hire that same man who is Lord Voldemort in any capacity, much less in a capacity where that man could have any contact at all with Harry Potter.

He looks back anyway, because Thomas Moregrave is what these people know him as. If he is Thomas Moregrave, then surely Lord Voldemort he is not.

Not right now, at least.

The speaker is one tall woman (though not as tall as he). She is stern and well put together, almost a paper doll in the crisp folds of her robes. Her hair might as well be a solid object, strands all glued together into one bun. Minerva McGonagall nevertheless gives him the faintest of smiles, barely visible, when he looks back. He turns. The door falls closed behind him with a quiet thud of wood on stone. No matter how long he lives quietly beneath the notice of these peaceful magicians in this castle of magic and education, it seems that he cannot rid himself of constant battle-ready awareness for his surroundings.

“What can I do for you, Minerva?” he asks. His voice is pleasant and his stance is relaxed. Strangely for him, he feels pleasant and relaxed in the same moments as his stance is in this pose.

“I hate to ask this,” she begins. Somebody – Thomas Moregrave? Voldemort? – tilts his head in an unspoken question. “But I find myself unfortunately with a detention to administer and no time in which to administer it. I was wondering if you might find time on a night when you have no patrol duties or office hours.”

“Ah.”

The question is a loaded one, to be sure. He does not really assign detentions, mostly because he does not believe in them. He also has no patience for them – still feels a twitch of his wand hand in the aborted shape of a Cruciatus when children screech during class time without abatement nor care for reprimand. He is not certain if he has thoroughly worked through the moral quandries involved in a latent desire to torture children when they irritate him, unrealised as those desires may be. He assuages himself by ejecting them from his classroom where they can no longer disturb the children who behave themselves appropriately. If they care to return for their missed homework assignments, he does not then punish them. If they do not care, they do not receive grades. He finds this a cleaner system on the whole. It has worked thus far for this year’s DADA classes.

Yet on that other hand, he does not strictly speaking refuse to give detentions. Refusing to believe in the efficacy of the practice does not mean the practice does not occur. Nobody has yet demanded it of him, so he has not engaged. But he has at the same time cultivated a pleasant enough relationship with his erstwhile colleagues, and he finds himself unwilling to be labeled as somebody who cannot be turned to during times of overwork.

Not that he wishes to take on the entire schoools’ worth of work. He would not survive it, immortal body and shredded soul or no.

“A detention, you said? Just the one, or a series?” he asks, to be sure of his understanding.

“Just the one,” Minerva tells him. “Only for an hour, at that.”

She looks hopeful. He thinks that is the name for this emotion, at least.

Thomas shrugs one shoulder, because Lord Voldemort would never act so casually around another human. Then again, perhaps he would. “I have enough spare evenings to take care of it for you,” he says. The words drip easily from his lips. The congenial smile that slides across those same lips comes less easily, but come it does. “Will tomorrow evening at 7:00 do? My office.”

Minerva’s smile is still tight, but wider this time. This, he thinks, must be relief. “It will indeed. Thank you very much,” she says. “I assure you, this is not usually the situation, but this year…”

It is Voldemort more than Thomas who sighs. “Oh, no, I understand being overbooked very well. Don’t worry about it – it’s the least I can do.”

This smile feels oddly genuine. He frowns on the inside of his face and puts the strangeness of it away to examine later. In an effort to distract himself, a thought occurs to him. “May I ask what student I am detaining?”

“Oh, of course,” Minerva says. “Harry Potter.”

Ah. Fuck.

  


“ _I really do not see why you’re so mad about this_ ,” Nagini hisses. She is curled across Voldemort’s lap and chest as he lays in bed in his chambers, staring desolately at the deep gray canopy ceiling of his bed and trying to work up the motivation to fall asleep. “ _So what if it’s that hatchling? Just don’t kill it or act predatory. It’ll be fine._”

“ _I am not mad_ ,” Voldemort hisses back. His voice is flat – tone also desolate, just like his gaze, or so he imagines. “ _I merely don’t want to do it._ ”

“ _Well, don’t do it, then._ ”

He almost laughs at this. So simple, so _snakelike_ an answer. And yet is this not why he always seeks out Nagini’s advice? When the humans with whom he ostensibly shares a species are so bewildering as to make his head spin and his faculties run freely loose and confused, Nagini’s soft hiss into his ear carries with it sensible, grounded advice, free of those spinning strangenesses. She removes the chaff of confusion from the wheat of what is actually happening in his life.

Still.

“ _The problem_ ,” he hisses as he gently pats her scaled head, “ _is that I already said I would do it. If I refuse to do so now I will lose social credit._ ”

“ _So?_ ”

He cannot help it – he laughs at this. “ _So_ ,” he hisses, “ _they will resent me for it. I will be less trusted and I may even be questioned as to why. I won’t be able to tell them that it is because of the specific hatchling, and then they will ask me why I said yes in the first place._ ”

“ _Voldemort, that is so complicated. Just don’t do it._”

He does wish he could take her advice, but he cannot.

“ _You’re horrible_ ,” she says when he tells her this. “ _And dumb._ ”

“ _Yes, I am quite dumb._ ”

“ _No, you’re supposed to argue! Only I can call you dumb. You can’t call yourself dumb._ ”

For some strange reason, his eyes burn at this, and he has to turn over and truly ignore her in an attempt to sleep until the sensation leaves him.

He does not, in the end, take Nagini’s sound advice.

  


On Thursday evening at 6:30, Voldemort sits in his office and breathes. He departed dinner early to prepare himself for this moment. He is not afraid that this change in Thomas Moregrave’s schedule will make anyone suspicious of him. It is easily explained, if only they decide to search their minds for one, by the idea that this is the first detention Thomas Moregrave is giving in his time at Hogwarts. He has gained some notoriety among the staff for his avoidance of them. Of course he requires time to adjust himself to the idea.

The truth is nowhere near anyone’s radar of ideas.

Harry Potter.

Voldemort takes another deep breath, and places his forehead on his folded hands.

It is not that he wishes harm on the child. On Potter. No, not explicitly that. He is a teacher here. Potter is in his classes. Potter is, on clear-eyed examination, a painfully average child in academics. Gryffindor. Sports. Brash. Ill-mannered. Loud. Many of the traits he so dislikes in Gryffindors are proudly on display in Harry Potter, as if they were features rather than flaws. Lord Voldemort is by this time different enough to wonder if, perhaps, in Potter’s eyes, they _are_ features – if Voldemort’s own preferences for quiet solitude and hidden expressions are flaws.

He wonders if anyone has ever asked a Slytherin and a Gryffindor to talk this out with one another. He suspects nobody has.

In all he finds Harry Potter a curiosity more than he finds the child aggravating. This lack of aggravation feels strange to him when he considers how he is Lord Voldemort. How intricately intertwined is Harry Potter with Lord Voldemort’s downfall, after all? Should he not despise the boy for a painful decade of nonbeing? Everything thinks he should. That he does. That Lord Voldemort despises Harry Potter and thinks only of the boy’s end through the point of Voldemort’s own wand is a given fact. It is incontrovertably true. Who could argue the point without sounding lunatic?

But still, here Lord Voldemort sits, and he does not hate. He only feels quietly tired of it all, and thinks perhaps this is what they mean when they say ‘live and let live’.

He lifts his head and begins to arrange some papers to grade mere moments before there is a knock at the door. He glances at the open pocketwatch propped against a stack of books, and sees that strangely the boy is perfectly on time.

“Come in,” he calls, and does not look up from his parchment essays.

The door creaks. A series of gentle footsteps approaches, then halts halfway into the room. For another moment, there is only silence.

“I’m here for my detention, sir,” says Potter. The boy’s voice is curiously flat, for what Voldemort has understood of him through classes, and flat enough at that for Voldemort to look up.

Potter stands there in the black, red, and gold robe of a second-year Gryffindor. That same robe is a bit too short about the ankles and wrists. It fits him ill in the shoulders – too small. Just barely, enough to not be noticeable if one does not know clothing as Lord Voldemort knows clothing. If one does not pay attention. His shoes are not proper wizard boots but muggle trainers. They are scuffed. He does not look at them for too long because the child will despise that look.

“So you are,” he says instead of looking, and gestures at the chair he’s set aside for this moment. “Sit.”

Potter sits. Voldemort finds this, too, strange, but through analogy and not through observation. Many of the professors complain of Potter’s behavior. Rude – ill-behaved – disobedient. Yet he sits without complaint, in a detention.

He considers simply having the boy sit in silence until the hour is up. He had originally planned for this. The less direct interaction there is between Thomas Moregrave and Harry Potter, the less chance there is that anything ugly from their quietly shared past will rear its head. By rights he should ensure that this is the last time they are alone in a room together.

He does nothing of the sort, and stops marking essays after the first one. It isn’t even finished being graded, but there is an irresistable _tug_ inside of him, coaxing him to speech.

“So, mister Potter, why do you have detention?” he asks.

Harry Potter turns a pair of narrowed green eyes on him. Voldemort looks carefully back at the child, and very specifically does not make any expressions with his face that might be interpreted as punitive.

“Didn’t professor McGonagall tell you?” asks the child.

Voldemort sighs and leans forward, moving his gaze from the child to the back wall of his office. “She did not, no,” he says. “This was rather a last-minute shift, and there was not time.”

All he gets in response is incoherent mumbling noises. After a single sentence of this is followed by silence, Voldemort fails to hold back another sigh. “I cannot understand your meaning when you enunciate that way,” he says. “Perhaps speak louder?”

For a moment he feels the acute sensation that Potter is about to scoff at him. Instead he gets another narrow look, and a still muttered but now understandable utterance of “Snape”.

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere,” says Voldemort. “What did Severus do?”

“You wouldn’t believe me anyway,” says Potter, moody as only a child can be, and turns away.

Voldemort wonders about this statement.

“Why would I not believe you?” he asks. His only response is a long, exaggerated shrug.

“Well,” the retired Dark Lord continues, “what’s the worst that might happen if you do tell me? I don’t believe you and call you a liar? It seems to me you already expect me to be doing that.”

Haltingly, he draws out a strange and rather disturbing sequence of events.

Harry Potter has two friends. This is two more than Tom Riddle ever had, and so Voldemort is inclined to brush off the concerns of the other teachers who find it unnerving that the boy’s social group is so small. Their names are Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Voldemort was quickly introduced to the concept of them within his first week of teaching, and so he is unsurprised that Potter’s story involves them.

The story also involves Severus Snape. If Voldemort were honest, he could see why Minerva did not believe Harry Potter’s justification for his action of trying to hex the professor. Yet that is the problem in its entirety – honesty, and his own ability to see honesty and lies with the back of his head, in form inexplicable but _known _.__

Harry Potter is not lying to Thomas Moregrave when he tells about a jinx that Gregory Goyle used on his friend Hermione Granger, a jinx to cause her front teeth to grow all the way to her waist. Lord Voldemort knows this is not a lie. Even if he were not to know for certain, lie or truth, he would know that such a jinx exists, that children are cruel, and that nothing about this is unbelievable.

Harry Potter is also not lying about Severus Snape being present. He is not lying about Severus Snape telling them, when Harry Potter demands to take his friend to the infirmary, that he sees no difference between the Hermione Grangers of before jinx and after jinx.

Whatever happened in truth, that is what the boy subjectively experienced, and he is not lying. Lord Voldemort would know if he were lying, would he not? One does not, cannot, lie to Lord Voldemort.

Usually he is either Lord Voldemort or Thomas Moregrave. More often lately he has been both. But for a moment as he listens he is Tom Riddle, not Thomas Moregrave, not Lord Voldemort, not even Thomas Voldemort Riddle – Tom Riddle, child, and when milk sours, he is responsible. When the already cracked wooden staircase breaks, he is responsible. When the wind blows a piece of crockery off the windowsill and shatters it in the orphanage dining room, he is responsible. He is not responsible, but nobody believes the word of a devil-child, and his wardrobe is on _fire_ –

For the first time in many months, he feels rage.

It is gone the moment it arrives, passing through his body like a wind. Harry Potter winces, and rubs his forehead. Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, Thomas Moregrave, and Thomas Voldemort Riddle all turn and watch this action as one, with distant horror in the back of their gray, brown, _red_ eyes.

“Headache?” he asks.

“My scar hurts sometimes,” Harry Potter says. “It’s gone already.”

“Well, alert me if it ever becomes unmanageable in class and you require a pass to the infirmary,” he says. It is a stupid thing to say, but Harry Potter may not recognise what it is to have a headache in class. It wastes everyone’s time and causes unneeded suffering to boot. Voldemort is not sure when he came to care about unneeded suffering. This thought feels like the first moment he has cared. Does he care about anyone, or only this child?

“So what’s my punishment for lying?” Harry Potter asks.

“You’re not lying,” Voldemort says. For the first time since 1980 the Dark Lord looks the Boy-Who-Lived directly in the eyes. Harry Potter looks the Dark Lord right back in the eye, and stares, face slack in shock. “Come now, you know you aren’t lying, and I do not think you are lying. We both know there is no real reason for you to be here.”

“You…”

The sentence trails off so soon that Voldemort does not know what it was meant to be. He continues with what he was going to say, to fill the silence.

“I will keep you here, and we will pretend you had a detention, just in order to keep Severus from coming after you over it,” he says. “But you need not do anything until the hour is up. You can work on your homework or read a book… if you have any on you.” It seems unlikely, considering what he has observed of Harry Potter’s character, and also of the fact that the boy has no bag with him. “Or something else that you enjoy doing, I suppose.”

“I like flying,” Harry Potter says. His voice is suddenly small and thin, where it was not previously small and thin. Voldemort has never heard the child sound this way before.

“Sadly, I can’t have a broom making laps in my office. Not large enough,” he says. Then he wonders if he has just made a joke, and has to remove his quill from the red inkwell to distract himself. “If you are happy enough with the idea of just sitting there, you can sit there. But I do have books at your year-level, on various Defense topics.” He points with the quill to the relevant shelf. “Feel free to peruse those and browse any that interest you.”

The remainder of the hour is spent marking essays as he pointedly pretends that he is not Lord Voldemort, and that Harry Potter is not feet from Lord Voldemort’s desk, reading a book about unusual jinxes with avid attention. When his pocketwatch chimes, Voldemort clicks off the alarm, and sets the boy free to go wherever it is that strange Gryffindor boys go when they don’t have evening detentions.

Potter’s hands slowly fold the book closed. He stands, and walks towards the shelf from whence it came, his every step screaming reluctance.

“You can borrow that if you like,” Voldemort says before he can stop himself.

  


“ _So?_ ” Nagini asks him once he goes to bed. Tonight she is on his pillow above his head, jaw resting on his forehead, tongue flickering in the air above the tip of his nose. “ _Was it utterly horrible, and are you sorry you did not listen to me?_ ”

“ _It was not as utterly horrible as I thought it might be_ ,” he tells her.

“ _I thought you did not like that hatchling._ ”

“ _I am undecided. He is not horrible company when he is quiet._ ”

“ _We’re not mad at him for when you died?_ ”

Voldemort closes his eyes and considers this for a long moment.

“ _No_ ,” he finally hisses. “ _We’re not, anymore._ ”

  


He is not asked to give Potter any more detentions the next week. What does happen is an invasion of his office hours by Harry Potter and his two friends. Ron Weasley stands in the back, as if a guard, and looks uncomfortable as Hermione Granger cries in front of his desk, Harry Potter’s arm around her shoulders, about a teacher actually believing that Severus Snape was, yes – horrible to them.

Another little piece of his scattered self is snapping into place as he listens to this. He is not sure where that piece is, though, nor what it could be called. He is not sure if the piece was scattered from him by his discorporation, or if it was never truly part of him, and he is only just becoming.

He feels rage again, and feels strange to find it is on behalf of others. Harry Potter winces again, and frowns at his hand after reaching up to rub his forehead.

Voldemort wonders about that, and considers that maybe he ought to be worried about the implications if he only ever feels rage when Harry Potter is near him. Perhaps he also ought to be worried about any conclusions which Harry Potter might draw about Thomas Moregrave from these scar-hurting coincidences.

… Why _does_ that happen?

  


_The Chamber of Secrets has been opened_ , the wall reads in blood – or at least in red paint. _Enemies of the heir, beware._

Oh, for fuck's sake, Voldemort thinks.

  


Inside of a notebook that rests in the right and bottom-most drawer of his desk, under a warded false bottom, there is a detailed and exceedingly elaborate plan for the murder of Lucius Malfoy. Side benefits to the murder of Lucius Malfoy include the fact that the baby Malfoy – Draco? Yes, that is the child’s name – will no longer be able to yell about how his father will hear about everything that even mildly inconveniences him in life after that same father is deceased.

The part of Lord Voldemort that is still a Dark Lord, which will never be able to stop being a ruthless mass murderer, looks forward to this change in the boy. The current generation of Malfoys is, to be perfectly frank, pitiful. Pathetic. Weak.

Even if he weren’t retired, he would not want them as his servants.

  


“I’m not the one who did it,” Harry Potter says to Thomas Moregrave, desperately, during Thomas Moregrave’s office hours. “I was just walking. Mrs. Norris was just _there_. So was Colin – I was just – ”

Voldemort does not know why he is the one who hears this speech. Then again, he also does not know why this speech should even need saying. Even without Voldemort’s background knowledge that the horcrux was explicitly targeting Harry Potter, thus involving Harry Potter in most of the crime scenes, the fact that a twelve year old boy is not capable of petrifying a ghost is simple truth.

“I know,” he says to Harry Potter when the boy seems to have lost the breath needed to speak further. “You are not the one responsible. To anyone with a brain, this fact is obvious.”

“Why hasn’t Dumbledore told them that, then?!”

Because he’s a complete bastard, Voldemort thinks. “I’m sorry to say it makes as little sense to me as it does to you,” he says.

“I’m not crazy,” says Harry. There is a challenge hidden in the depths of his eyes, peeking out. Tom Riddle thinks for a strange moment that he recognises it. The non-sequitor, though, confuses him some.

“Did I ever imply you were?” he asks.

Harry hesitates.

Voldemort thinks down into the drawer where a notebook of murder plots and a subdued, childish horcrux are hidden together.

“Dumbledore,” Harry says slowly. He draws the syllables and sounds out, more a chain of noises than a name. “I didn’t… tell him that I heard a voice. The night Mrs. Norris was attacked.”

“A voice?” Voldemort asks, and raises his eyebrows in a wordless order to continue.

“Yeah,” Harry says. He lifts his chin as he continues. “It was in the walls, talking about blood.”

He is not lying about this, either. It’s very strange, how little Harry Potter lies. Is it only to Thomas Moregrave that Harry Potter does not lie? Or is he always telling the truth, and it is the others, blind to truths and lies without instinctive legilimency, or whatever it is that causes Voldemort’s intuition, who are falsely labeling the child’s painful truths as lies?

Then again, he’s only focusing on this question in order to prevent himself from reaching across the desk and shaking Harry Potter senseless, from screaming in Parseltongue at him to see if he really will understand it.

“That’s rather disturbing,” is all he says.

The basilisk always was a little odd, and even odder after Tom Riddle’s fifth year at Hogwarts, to be truthful. He does not say this aloud.

“I’m not crazy,” Harry repeats. “I heard it. It was real.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Voldemort tells him. “But there isn’t much you can achieve by belaboring the point to others.” A strange whimsy takes him. “Not all of us are used to dealing with strange voices that nobody else can seem to hear.”

Perhaps because Harry Potter, too, is a strange boy, he does not seem horrified by any of the implications Voldemort just made. “What do you hear, then?” is all he asks.

“A very bossy woman who gives me excellent advice.”

Nagini will threaten to bite him for this later. She may even bite him in truth, though it will be a dry bite. Voldemort can only find amusement in the idea.

  


“You’re _Voldemort_ ,” Harry exclaims breathlessly when he bursts into Voldemort’s office two days after Christmas.

Is he? “Am I?” he asks faintly, wine glass still in hand, and wondering just what on Earth he is supposed to be doing about this. He isn’t even having office hours right now. How did Harry Potter come to understand this, first of all? Does anyone else know? Does he need to pack up rather quickly and flee the castle? Should he be panicking?

He is not, in fact, panicking. He isn’t even certain if he is Lord Voldemort in this moment, which is an odd sensation to be having, given how often he thinks of himself as such internally.

Harry Potter doesn’t seem too panicky about this either, if Voldemort is being honest. He points a finger triumphantly at Voldemort and declares his identity once more. “You’re _Voldemort_.”

“You said that already,” Voldemort says, and sips his wine.

The finger trembles a little, triumphant pose relaxing. “Aren’t you mad that I know?”

“I never agreed that I was Voldemort,” Voldemort says irritably. Does this have to happen now, and not at the end of June?

“You just said the name, though,” Harry says and crosses his arms. “Nobody else calls him Voldemort except me and Dumbledore, because we’re not scared of him. Of you. So you’re not scared of yourself, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Voldemort repeats, and tries to find anything to explain why he finds that assertion amusing. He cannot find an explanation, and he laughs anyway.

“Why are you laughing!” Harry cries. It is an obstinate child’s exclamation – confused and angry that the world does not fall into the neat play expected by a child’s understanding of adult circumstances.

“You’re amusing, Harry. Why shouldn’t I laugh?”

“Because you’re Voldemort!” Harry screeches. “Don’t you want to kill me?”

“Hm,” Voldemort hums. He props his chin in his hand and stares out the window at the falling snow for a short moment. “No, I do not think I do.”

“You’re – ”

For a moment Harry seems to falter, belief overtaken by confusion. Voldemort wants to watch it go completely, but he does not get to see that in the end. Instead, the boy’s resolve strengthens. “You’re still Voldemort,” he proclaims.

“You know,” Voldemort says, sighing, and turns to look at Harry Potter once more, “that is an incredibly serious accusation to make.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Harry blows air from his nose in the way children sometimes do while trying to seem aggressive.

“No comment. I would appreciate it if you would tell me why you believe this to be true.”

Instead of acting in any way sensible, Harry flops down into his usual chair and proceeds to tell Voldemort all about why he is Voldemort.

It’s circumstantial at best. It would not stand up in a muggle court of law, not beyond a reasonable doubt. But a muggle court has far higher standards than a wizard court, which, in Britain at least, always tends to be either a kangaroo court or a show trial – sometimes both at once. Merely being seen with apparently red eyes for a moment would be plenty to convict literally anyone of being Lord Voldemort.

By the time Harry is done talking, Voldemort is staring back out the snowy window. He supposes this is why he did not want to have anything to do with Harry Potter while he was here. He also supposes that part of him is, strangely, not surprised.

At least he has a shocking revelation to drop on Potter in return. Tit for tat, as it were.

“Let’s assume you’re correct for a moment,” he says, slipping into his professorial mode without effort. He always did love giving lectures. “You came here, alone, without backup, and without telling anyone where you were going or why. Pretend that not only am I Voldemort in this scenario, but I also desire your death. You are doomed.”

Harry opens his mouth as if to speak, but Voldemort leans forward, whips Thomas Moregrave’s wand out, and sends a blot of bright pink color-changing spell at Harry. The boy of course cannot dodge, and his sweater gains a bright pink stain at its front. “I am going to need to drastically increase the number of mock self-defense exercises I put every class through because of this, you do realise?” he says, wand twirling in his hand as Harry gapes down at the sweater. “Had I truly had any desire to murder you then you would be dead just then.”

“So you’re Voldemort,” Harry says – of course, pouncing on the least relevant piece of dialogue. “But you don’t want to kill me.”

He really shouldn’t.

It’s just that he’s so very exasperated.

  


Thomas Moregrave, of all of them, is the one man who is not real. Tom Riddle, though young and long since dead to the world, is not exactly gone and was once the only option for being that Voldemort had. Lord Voldemort is real, as well – if nothing else, his many murders see to that. Thomas Voldemort Riddle is perhaps the realest one of them all, a strange coalescing of features from both of them, accompanied and tempered by new qualities such as an appreciation for laziness and a deep and burning philosophical question called ‘ _who am I?_ ’

It is therefore easy for the pleasant mask of Thomas Moregrave to fall off. No matter how long he goes without committing any new murder or torture upon another human, his true self is far more serrated than Thomas Moregrave. He is angular and filled with sharp corners, smooth and predatory.

“What do you want to hear, exactly, Harry?” Voldemort murmurs. The false solidness of Thomas Moregrave gone, he is more liquid than solid. “I do not do apologies, and I am trying – with success so far, in fact – to be retired.”

Somehow the child before him is not scared of him.

“I want to know why,” he says. He crosses his arms and stares back at Voldemort without flinching. It is an accomplishment tried and failed by so many mages both older and more educated than this twelve year old boy, and yet Voldemort finds it is this – _this_ – which makes him respect, just a bit.

“Why I… what?”

“Killed my parents.”

Ah.

Voldemort thinks for a long moment. “There has to be a reason!” Harry cries before Voldemort can finish thinking.

“Be patient, I am arguing with myself,” he says.

“What? Over what?”

“ _Be quiet, hatchling._ ”

The hiss is Parseltongue. Harry makes absolutely no indication that he has noticed anything at all unusual about either the order of the phrase or the choice of words in which Voldemort indulged. This is so intriguing on its own that Voldemort finds himself eyeing Harry over his wine glass, and then finds himself making a decision.

“I will tell you everything I know if you agree to, afterwards, sit in that chair and listen to me tell _you_ why your scar hurts around me,” he says, waving a hand grandly and allowing his now-empty wine glass to float over to the desk. Thomas Moregrave does not do wandless magic, but right now he is not Thomas Moregrave.

Predictably, Harry doesn’t even notice. He only nods shortly and agrees, and so Voldemort tells him everything. A prophecy, a Fidelius, Pettigrew’s betrayal, the discovery, Severus’ plea for the life of Lily Potter. Why he chose Halloween. What happened in Harry’s bedroom. He even adds in some bonus content in the form of his obtaining the stone last year and his inevitable retirement.

Inevitable? He had not yet verbalised that to himself, but he supposes it is true.

“Snape?” Harry is saying, quiet, horrified. “It was _Snape?_ ”

“Yes, he’s horrible, isn’t he?” Voldemort says. Then he watches in shock as Harry curls in on himself and begins to cry.

He is not equipped for this situation.

Voldemort pours himself another glass of wine, drapes a throw blanket on Harry’s shuddering form, and looks pointedly out the window until the boy has composed himself once more. There is a moment when, out of the corner of his eye, he sees the boy stare at the throw blanket in shock.

“Aren’t you evil?” he asks, voice raspy.

“I don’t believe in morality,” Voldemort tells him.

“Everyone says you’re evil,” Harry says. Voldemort says nothing, and the child goes on as if arguing with himself. “But an evil person wouldn’t be – you believe me and Ron and Hermione about – about things. And you didn’t kill me yet. And you’re nice. How are you _nice?_ ”

“It boggles my mind as much as it does yours,” Voldemort says. He finally allows himself to turn back around. “As for believing you, I must admit I cheat a little. I can tell when I am being lied to. It does not matter how skilled the liar is – I just know when it is a lie.”

Harry squints at him. “How?”

“Magic.” Voldemort shrugs. “I was born with it. _The same way I was born able to speak to snakes, in fact_ ,” he goes on in a hiss.

“ _Yeah, I heard about that one_ ,” Harry hisses back, narrow-eyed. Voldemort watches him carefully for any sign at all that he is aware that they have switched languages, but finds none worth an explanation. “ _You’re the heir of Slytherin._ ”

Voldemort switches back to English. “I am the last current descendant of Slytherin,” he corrects carefully. “There is nothing to actually be the heir to. No money, no estate, not even a fancy title… Well,” he corrects himself, “I suppose a fancy title. But I have no interest in hereditary noble titlage because it gets me nothing except for prestige in a system that I do not wish to be a part of. Therefore, it is useless to me.”

“What about the Chamber of Secrets?” Harry challenges.

“A half-flooded wreck of a stone bunker system under the school,” Voldemort says. “I did not open it this year. An enchanted object I made in my youth did it all, and it was very much not supposed to be here. I have contained it – why do you think there haven’t been any more attacks?”

“If there are any more, I’m telling Dumbledore about you right away,” Harry says.

“Fair enough, I suppose,” Voldemort acknowledges. “But otherwise, you won’t?”

“You had a lot of chances to kill me and didn’t,” Harry says, and shrugs. For the first time this evening the boy appears uncomfortable. “I think if you’re really retired and aren’t going to kill anyone else, then…”

“I was planning to kill the man who unleashed the enchanted object without my permission,” Voldemort says. It is more because he wants to see how this strange boy will react than any other reason he could have. “Do you object to this as well?”

“You shouldn’t kill people,” Harry says. But he says nothing more.

After a strangely companionable silence, Voldemort begins to tell him about the scar.

He supposes he should have predicted that this revelation would cause another bout of crying.

  


“You’re immortal,” Harry says dully.

“I am.”

“And I’m – ”

“You are.”

  


Oddly, nobody comes after him for being Voldemort once Harry leaves. Then Voldemort has to reflect on the idea that he finds this odd, and discovers that he actually expected to be caught here. At the least, he expected to be confronted, and he expected to have to flee.

He’s… pleased, that he can stay and continue to teach.

He writes a short thank you note to Harry on the boy’s first essay once term begins again. In it he refers to the silence as a birthday present, and inevitably, the boy invades his office hours once more.

“When was your birthday?!”

“I thought you did not like me anymore?”

“Just tell me when it was!”

  


Horcrux aside, the amount of time that Harry Potter continues to spend with the retired Dark Lord is illogical. Voldemort has no good explanation. He tries to pry one out of Harry at multiple points, but instead of anything useful, the child is only confused by himself and his own impulses. Voldemort is sure there must be an answer of some description in there, somewhere, but he is not dealing with an adult. He is dealing with a twelve year old child who does not know the concept of introspection, and might not know it even if it slithered up to bite him on the ankle and chase him down the corridor.

Instead, he ends up teaching Harry how to understand when he is speaking Parseltongue versus when he is speaking English. This further necessitates introducing Harry to Nagini, which further means that Harry immediately divines something he should by all rights have forgotten about.

“ _Oh!_ ” he exclaims. “ _That’s what you meant when you said you hear the voice of a bossy woman telling you what to do!_ ”

“ _You said WHAT to the hatchling?!_ ”

Voldemort briefly contemplates hiding in the side room and regretting his choices.

  


“Harry, answer me a hypothetical question.”

“Okay?”

“Pretend that I return to teach again next year. Your opinion?”

“... Well, that’ll make Hermione happy. She thinks you’re better than Quirrell. Even though I guess you were Quirrell?”

“I was not doing the teaching last year,” Voldemort drawls, and continues to stare out the window. “I did not ask for miss Granger’s opinion, however, but for yours.”

“Oh.” There is a silence as the boy considers this.

“... You’re better than Quirrell,” he says slowly. “And – yes. You should come back next year.”

The sudden decision is interesting, but Voldemort files it away for later, and not for now. “In that case,” he says, turning from the window, “I will need your assistance.”

Harry squints at him suspiciously. “What are we doing?”

Voldemort yanks a poker from the stand to the side of his office fireplace and grins. He is not sure he has grinned so truthfully in quite some time. In face, he may not have grinned so genuinely in all his life to date.

“You and I are going to break the curse that the Dark Lord Voldemort put on the Defense position back in the 60s.”

He shows Harry the Chamber as part of their curse-breaking plot. Harry declares it gross. Voldemort feels strangely youthful as he traipses through scummy, ankle-deep water and gets the poker as dirty as he can. It has to seem real, after all.

He does send Harry away for the finale. This sort of thing needs to be realistic, and the level of realism he requires is not fit for children.

He wonders again when he began to worry about whether things were fit or unfit for children. There is no easy answer to that.

  


He is not dazed when he pulls himself into the infirmary, but he acts that way. His co-workers worry – Albus Dumbledore seems to, of all things, gloss over him. He focuses instead on the broken poker, declares it was the focus of the curse after all. In Thomas Moregrave’s voice and cadence, Voldemort declares with strange mania that he was right about the curse and that he is going to write a monograph about this for a commendation to accompany his Defense mastery. Nobody pays much attention to that. Severus snorts. Minerva admonishes him for not telling anyone he was doing something so dangerous. You weren’t here, she says. You do not know what You-Know-Who was like, she says.

Fortunately, Thomas Moregrave would be elated right now, and so his wild grin is not taken as anything but post-danger nervous adrenaline.

  


“You exploded your office!” Harry screeches.

“And the curse is gone,” Voldemort hums as he puts books back where they belong and matches loose pages to the appropriate spines. He has felt strange ever since he ‘broke’ the curse. Light, free – as if he could dance where he stood. He has smiled more. It’s been impossible to hide this airiness from his colleagues, but they attribute it to the weight of the curse, spending most of the year still active and invisibly attempting to drive Thomas Moregrave from his position, being suddenly broken and releasing the better spirits of the young DADA professor.

“But you exploded your office!” Harry yells again. “We saw the window explode all the way from the Quidditch pitch!”

“Harry, you are dangerously close to sounding like you care about my well-being,” Voldemort says over his shoulder.

The child finally clamps his mouth shut and stares at Voldemort mutinously. He makes for his usual armchair and pauses when he sees that it is ripped, puffs of cotton bursting through the cushions. “You broke my chair, too?!”

“Merlin, Harry, curse-breaking is not a nice and neat activity,” Voldemort groans. He waves his wand at the thing anyway, and the rips heal, the cotton stuffing itself back inside. “Is that better for your royal princeling?”

“Loads,” says Harry, and flops down.

They exist in that strange and somewhat companionable silence as Voldemort continues fixing up the wreck that was (is?) his office. Unlike their usual companionable silence, however, this one is heavier. Voldemort wonders if he would have even noticed were it not for the juxtaposition of his own good mood.

When all the loose stonework is brushed against the walls and the white curtain over the once-window has been once again checked and charmed against drafts, Voldemort glances again at the rather moody twelve year old. His own usual armchair has been mostly destroyed, so he settles down on the desk itself and crosses his legs.

“You’re being terribly depressing,” he tells the boy.

Harry glares at him for a moment and then looks away. “It’s June,” he says. As if that explains anything at all.

Then again, perhaps it does. It did for Tom Riddle.

“For what reason does the impending summer vacation depress you?” Voldemort asks.

Harry looks at him then, and doesn’t look away again. He is frowning. “How did you know it was summer vacation?”

“I did not, but you just confirmed it,” Voldemort tells him. He receives an offended huff in reply. “ As for the guess, though…”

To say or not to say, he wonders?

Then again, what the hell.

“Once a boy named Tom Riddle had the same dislike of June and impending summer vacation,” he said.

“Tom Riddle?” Harry squints. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Of course you haven’t. He is mostly dead now, anyway… I daresay you might find him in the graduating yearbook from 1944, though, if you went to look in the library. He was the valedictorian that year.”

This statement takes Voldemort by surprise, and he has to repeat it to himself. Harry is still squinting at him, lips moving slowly.

“... Are you Tom Riddle?” he asks.

“No, Harry, he’s dead. I was only born as him.”

“You’re pretty alive.”

“I am really not him,” he says, and sighs. “Although – look at this.” Whimsy takes him once more, and he sketches the name _Tom Marvolo Riddle_ into glowing letters in the air. With a flick of his wand, they rearrange themselves into his once-anagram, and then, after a moment has passed enough to read them, he runs a hand through the lot and they vanish into golden wisps.

“Huh,” Harry says.

“You sound more shocked than I expected.”

“I didn’t expect you to, I mean…” The child pauses for a long moment. “You were a kid once. That’s weird. You seem like you weren’t a kid.”

“I was a horrible child. By which I mean, both a vicious troublemaker, and horrible at being a child to boot.”

“Yeah, I could believe that,” Harry says. “So, can I call you Tom, since that’s your real name?”

“I would rather you stab me with a rusty letter opener than call me Tom. I would prefer Thomas Voldemort Riddle, really.”

Harry goes quiet. This is unexpected, so Voldemort pays attention to him again.

“... If I _don’t_ call you that,” he says slowly, “will you – I mean, as Professor Moregrave – will you help me tell professor McGonagall and professor Dumbledore that I should stay at the castle this summer?”

The long scattered piece that has been slowly binding itself back to him all year finally clicks completely into place. Voldemort stills as he feels it, wrenching itself in somewhere below his ribs. The aftershooks of this becoming shoot all through his nerves, and he feels both that he hears bomb sirens in the distance and that he will put at least one more murder of an old man into his notebook of excessively complex murder plans.

He slides off the desk and sits on the floor instead, legs crossed. Harry’s eyes follow him down, growing wider as he goes.

“No matter what I say this plan will not work,” he tells Harry solemnly. “I know that it will not work because Albus Dumbledore has no tolerance for any student staying over the summer holidays, and never has. I tried quite often when I was both your age and older than you and he shot every argument down, even the one which included the fact that the Germans were bombing London.”

Harry’s eyes fly wider than he’s ever seen them. A strange and brittle smile flashes its way across Voldemort’s face without his permission.

“So,” he goes on, “I will propose an alternative solution to whatever woes you face this summer.”

Something flickers across Harry’s face. “Not murder,” he says.

“I was not actually going to suggest murder,” Voldemort says, “but the fact that you felt you needed to say that makes me wonder if I should desire a murder.”

Harry shakes his head. Voldemort sighs internally and resigns himself to prodding the truth out of the boy over the summer. “Instead of going off to whatever that place is which you do not wish to return to, you will come to my house.”

“You have a house,” Harry repeats flatly.

“Shocking, I know,” says Voldemort. “I happen to think it’s a rather nice house. I have more than one spare room that could easily become a bedroom, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me being despicable and shoving you into a closet or something.”

That, worryingly, elicits tears. He mentally adds a space in his notebook for yet another undetermined victim of elaborate and excessive murder. Every human needs a hobby, after all.

  


“And you’re sure I can write letters to my friends,” Harry asks again.

“I am.”

“And visit them.”

“Indeed.”

“And use the telephone.”

“I do not have one in the house but there is a pay phone near the house which you can use. I’ll give you coins for it.”

“And ride my broom?”

“Only in the back yard, but yes.”

“What about chores?”

“I do most things with magic. If you feel a lethal need to do work we can discuss options.”

“And Dumbledore won’t know?”

“I’ve been right under his nose this whole year, haven’t I?”

“I told Ron and Hermione about you,” Harry blurts out.

Voldemort eyes him. “Hmm. And I must assume that as I have not been bothered by panicking adults, they have… done nothing? As you have?”

“I told them about you way back in January,” Harry says with a huff. “Since you didn’t do anything to me…”

“Ah, that’s why mister Weasley will no longer meet my eyes, and why miss Granger stares so often when she thinks I’m not looking. So much is now explained…”

“They know that I’m going with you, so if I don’t reply to their letters, they’ll do something.”

“As well they should.” Voldemort lights the fire in the fireplace and picks up Harry’s trunk with his magic – wandless, as ever. “If you don’t head down to the Express now you will likely miss it.”

“ _Is Nagini already at the nest?_ ” Harry hisses.

“ _She is indeed._ ”

“Okay,” Harry says. “Um… see you later, then.”

He ducks out of the door. Voldemort watches the empty threshold for a while, and feels unutterably strange.

He Floos to one of his less secure safe-houses, and does a complicated ritual to rid himself of any stray tracking magic before walking a mile up the road and apparating around the country five times before he appears in his own front yard. This done, he makes lunch and relaxes in a hammock he’s added to his back yard – Nagini curled up on top of him as he idly reads a work of muggle fantasy fiction – until his pocket-watch chimes.

He puts only a glamour on to turn his eyes gray. Thomas Moregrave’s face should not be associated with Harry Potter’s strange summer disappearance if he has anything to say about it – if, indeed, anyone even notices.

When he apparates to the Express platform, he is just in time to watch the train itself pull in. He stands in the back, unnoticed, and waits. Eventually three children stealthily approach, until they are close enough to make him out. He can see Harry squinting at him.

“Thought your eyes were – a different color,” he says suspiciously once he gets close. Mister Weasley and miss Granger are both staring directly at him, with very different and yet equally stubborn looks on their faces.

Children, he thinks with exasperation.

“They are,” Voldemort says simply. “But I shouldn’t like to cause a panic, so I use a glamour. Have you ever been side-along apparated before?”

“Side-a-what?”

The exasperation bursts free, and Voldemort looks skyward with a sigh. “Children these days,” he says. “They pamper you.”

“It’s like when a grown-up apparates you and then drags you along,” mister Weasley stage-whispers to Harry.

“Apparates?” Harry repeats blankly.

“Teleports,” miss Granger says.

“Oh, right,” Harry says. “Wait, they can do that?”

“You’ll learn the skill at sixteen,” Voldemort interrupts. “I don’t have eternity. Well, I suppose I technically do, but not in that sense.” He holds out his hand.

“If I don’t get letters from Harry at least once a week then I’ll come and – find you,” mister Weasley says, in a strange attempt at a threat.

“I want him to call me at least every other day,” says miss Granger. “He said you said there’s a pay phone nearby where you are.”

“I won’t allow him to work his or my owl to exhaustion,” Voldemort says, feeling strangely delighted by these small children trying to threaten a Dark Lord. It is almost – dare he think the word – adorable. “But the pay phone is a possibility. Miss Granger, you ought to teach mister Weasley how to use one. Navigating the muggle world and its technology without looking like a fool ought to be a required criterion for graduation from Hogwarts, and he’ll really be much better off for it.”

They are staring at him now as if he’d confunded them. Good, Voldemort thinks with glee. He twitches his offered hand. “Harry, the thing about eternity was really only a joke. I want to get to the pizza place before the Friday evening rush starts.”

“We’re having pizza?” Harry gasps, with far more awe than is expected. “I’ve never had pizza before.”

He takes Voldemort’s hand, and before they apparate away there is a small, faint sting – then nothing more than warmth. It felt of magic, but did so much nothing that Voldemort has no choice, once they have landed on the other side, but to attribute it to a burst of static electricity.

**Author's Note:**

> "I thought you said _Peter_ betrayed my parents to you!"
> 
> It takes a moment for Voldemort to comprehend which 'Peter' Harry means. "You mean Pettigrew? Yes, he did that."
> 
> "But if he did that, then why was _Sirius Black_ in prison for it?!"
> 
> "... Am I supposed to know?"


End file.
